Propranolol suppresses infantile hemangioma cell proliferation and promotes apoptosis by upregulating miR-125b expression.

Propranolol could repress infantile hemangioma cell growth and induce apoptosis. miR-125b could inhibit cell proliferation in some tumors. However, whether propranolol exerts its proliferation inhibition and apoptosis-promoting effect by regulating the expression of miR-125b needs to be further investigated. In tumor tissue and endothelial cells isolated from infantile hemangioma patients, we found that the expression levels of miR-125b were significantly decreased. In-vitro analysis revealed that propranolol increased the expression of miR-125b in hemangioma cells in a dose-dependent and time-dependent manner. Interestingly, it was observed that regression of miR-125b expression by its inhibitor could abrogate the effect of propranolol on hemangioma cell growth and apoptosis. In addition, our data further identified TFAP4 as a direct target of miR-125b. Collectively, our data provided evidence that propranolol may repress infantile hemangioma cell growth and promote apoptosis through upregulating the miR-125b expression, which exerted its suppression of tumor development by targeting TFAP4.